I don’t usually do a lot of research for short stories, but occasionally I need a piece of information that I don’t already have stored in my brain or bookmarked. That’s when I do a little bit of fast and dirty searching.

For instance, for a piece of flash fiction I just wrote, I needed a name for Death. Because it isn’t necessarily obvious right off that he is death I wanted a name that basically said he was death, but at the same time wasn’t so obvious that the reader rolled their eyes. So Hades, Anubis, Osiris, Mors, Pluto, Odin, etc. were all out. I also didn’t want it to be such an unusual-sounding name - I wanted one the reader could easily believe this odd guy might have.

So I went to Google (yes, that is currently my preferred search engine - plus I love the changing logo. Anyway.) and searched for *name of death deities*. On the first page of search results I got a few worthwhile pages, but nothing that really helped. So back to Google, this time searching for *name of death gods*. This time I got a page titled “Dead Names, Death Names,” and on that page I found Thanatos, also Than for short, a Greek God of Death. I then Wikied it, and found the description matched closely enough with my Death’s personality that it would work well. It is easily searchable, but not so obvious that every reader will get it right off. Perfect.

So my Death is named Thanatos, but you can call him Than for short.

That is, if you ever meet him. Which you should hope you don’t.